In the November 2009 issue of O (The Oprah Magazine), Dr. Oz analyses four approaches for treating headaches: Neurology, Acupuncture, Nutrition and HOMEOPATHY! Dana Ullman is quoted in the section on homeopathy-Dana has been very active promoting homeopathy in the US media, Huffington Post Online as well.

Under MY RECOMMENDATION Dr. Oz says: “Acupuncture and homeopathy are worth considering as adjunct therapies once you are sure that the headache is not a sign of serious disorder.”

Here is another great article by Harald Walach, research Professor in Psychology at the University of Northhampton. The summary is;

Does the campaign against CAM indicate that powerful factions feel threatened? A complacent CAM world has been slow to collect supporting data, but the waning of big pharma’s once unassailable economic and clinical dominance may be a significant motivator for some who oppose integration.With biotech innovation slowing down, and adverse event scandals and research irregularities, users are distrusting flagship revenue-producing medications. As healthcare policy reshapes mainstream medicine we will need to understand the forces ranged against integrated medicine.

I just LOVE this article published in NewScientist. Maybe one day Gimpy et al will admit there is something to homeopathy as well! After all, hope does spring eternal!!

MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen’s University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These “basophils” release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions – so dilute that they probably didn’t contain a single histamine molecule – worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths’ claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this “mother tincture” in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.

You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. “We are,” Ennis says in her paper, “unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon.” If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry.

A month ago Free To Choose Health’s weblog had a very funny satire about Ben Goldacre, Frogs and Frog Whisperers. You can read the satirical post here. It seems the satire had more to it than understood at first blush. There has been an air tight replicated homeopathic study with frogs! “The effect of homeopathically prepared thyroxine on highland frogs: influence of electromagnetic fields”, can be read in its entirety here. I have also posted the abstract below. The delicious part is, the web site that published the study is called “Science Direct”! Chew on that awhile, Bad Science Boys!!

Abstract

Background: Previous experiments show that amphibian larvae are responsive to homeopathically prepared thyroxine.

Methods: We studied the effect of a highly diluted and agitated thyroxine solution exposed to various electromagnetic fields on metamorphosis in highland Rana temporaria. The devices tested were: microwave oven, mobile phone, airport X-ray, and a red light barcode scanner. Animals were treated either with homeopathically prepared thyroxine (10−30 parts by weight, 10−35 in the water in which the animals were kept), or analogously prepared blank solution, or analogously prepared thyroxine exposed to the electromagnetic field of one of the devices tested. Solutions were administered at 48 h intervals according to a standardized protocol.

Results: Animals treated with the standard test solution thyroxine 10−30 metamorphosed more slowly than the control animals, ie the effect of the homeopathically prepared thyroxine was opposed to the usual physiological effect of molecular thyroxine. The cumulative number of test animals that had reached the four-legged stage at defined points in time was smaller in the group treated with homeopathically prepared thyroxine at most of the points in time. This was found independently by all three research teams involved.

In contrast, this effect did not occur when the thyroxine solution had been exposed to the field of the early model microwave oven, or mobile phone. There was no difference between aqueous or alcoholic solutions were used, and there was, if any, only a small protective effect from aluminum foil. Airport X-ray and red light barcode scanning did not diminish the effect of the homeopathic solution.